Weekly News Update: LoL Bans Bad People and France is Silly

Okay, maybe calling France silly is a low blow, but like it or not, they sure in this weeks news! Pure Sophistry has been bringing you quality, informative news all week long. But what about that other stuff? The shock-value, unimportant but hilarious news that you’d like to hear but really shouldn’t? Well, that’s what I’m here for. Every weekend, I’ll sum up the best stuff from the past week of news, package it with a bit of humor and hop that you leave smiling and potentially wiser. I don’t guarantee that though…

Now, what better to start us of than…wait, League of Legend? Oh, god damn it...

A friendly PSA: Don’t install League of Legends. It is an addictive relatively horrible game that has wasted far too many hours of my own life and I hope to spare you from the often virulent community as well as the completely terror of fighting Darius or Jax.

This particular PSA is to warn you that the Crack-like game from Riot is now spreading to the Mac nearest you. While this will certainly make LoL available to a much greater group of people, no doubt spreading the love of laning and jungling to many more people. More information was given by Riot higher-ups in the Official Forums:

“Riot engineers re-wrote a lot of the underlying game engine so that both PC and Mac platforms share the same code base and assets,” Steve Mieczkowski (who is an associate producer of the game) wrote in the League of Legends official forum. “This means Mac players will receive all future features, bug fixes, and new content at the same time as PC users.”

Oh goody, now we can get Mac Fan boys and LoL fanboys together for a fanboy-pocalypse….I kid, I kid (I don’t kid.)

Speaking of League of Legends….

A while back the Council of Summoners (are they a legit administrative body, idk) banned one of the games best players for, more or less, being a douche. I was pleasantly surprised by this. It showed a real commitment on the part of riot not only to maintain some standards in their game as an e-Sport, and as a place of at least some decency.

Well, Riot has done it again. Two players from the team Solo Mebdi have been given LIFETIME bans , and a third has been given a standard one-year ban. It seems this was for good reason as well. One of the players, Khaled Abusagr , had his account reported numerous times (18% of all his matches) for “Offensive Language, Verbal Abuse, and Negative Attitude.” In addition he had a second account, under the name DarkwinJax which was infamous: “The DarkwinJax account established the highest harassment score ever recorded on the EU West server. No player, before or since, has matched this degree of negative behavior.”

The second lifetime-ban recipient was also damned by a past account, previously flagged for “ engaging in a series of DDOS attacks against high-Elo players.” The League of Legends community is much better off without the likes of these two plaguing it….

…even if it is still a hive of scum and villainy.

Staying on the subject of Bans: Pakistan has decided to Ban the most recent Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. Yep, just outright. Well, okay, they’ve got a pretty good reason. Their reasons for this ban are expressed below:

The Association has always boycotted these types of films and games. These (games) have been developed against the country’s national unity and sanctity. The games (Medal of Honor: Warfighter and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2) have been developed against Pakistan, and the association has completely banned their sale. Shopkeepers are warned and will be responsible for the consequences if found purchasing or selling these games.”

To be fair, these game don’t show Pakistan in the best light. They don’t show Pakistan in a good light at all. Banning them however, doesn’t really help the image of Pakistan in the globe-at-large. I’m not sure there’s any easy way for Pakistan to improve its image through the medium of video games, but this certainly isn’t it.

And while we are on the subject of Modern War Games and Bad Decisions: A French soldier has recently come under an incredible amount of heat for, more or less, getting into the spirit of things and looking incredibly badass.

The yet unnamed French legionnaire donned a skull emblazoned mask, making him the near spitting image of Modern Warfare’s Ghost. The French leadership was not impressed with the resulting photo, which gained a moderate bit of attention on the internet:

But, I’ll quote Andy Chalk of the escapist, who brings up an excellent point: It’s hardly a surprising choice of couture for a relatively young man who, when you get down to it, is is paid to kill people on behalf of his government; when death is your business, a death’s head motif is a natural fit.

“It was evening, and rays of sunlight were pushing through the trees and into the dust clouds. It was a lovely light. I spotted this soldier wearing a strange scarf and took the photo. At the time, nothing about the scene seemed especially unusual or shocking. The soldier wasn’t posing and there was nothing staged about the image. He was just standing there, protecting his face from the dust, waiting for the chopper to land. No one tried to stop me shooting the picture.”

Velociraptors and Marshmallow?! AND ZOMBIES?!

Finally this week, pure hilarity. Left 4 Dead 2 has had some pretty great mods, from fully fleshed out new campaigns, to weapon skins a plenty. However, two mods popped up this week on my radar that I couldn’t help but chuckle at.

The first one replaces every Tank with Stay Puff Marshmallow Men.

The second replaces the four protagonists with veloci-fucking-raptors.

I think that’s enough for this week. Hope you enjoyed!

Push it. Real Good:

About the Author

Born in Maine, educated in Canada, and forged on the internet, Jacob is a proud gamer, unabashed nerd, and writer. He received his degree in classics from Mount Allison University and his love of stories and their meaning from countless hours spent reading Homer, playing old school RPG’s and studying Joseph Cambell. His one rule to live by? “Always dress as if you were going to give a speech.